Re: King Tut's Nukes (back by popular demand)

From: Tim O'Flaherty (bigbrador_at_verizon.net)
Date: 08/03/04 

Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 09:21:30 GMT

"Karl Johanson" <karljohanson@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:cJAPc.156677$Mr4.43293@pd7tw1no...
> "Tim O'Flaherty" <bigbrador@verizon.net> wrote in message
> news:5LaPc.2057$7k6.462@trndny05...
> > In the year 2000, the US produced roughly 20% of it's electric
> power
> > with nuclear reactors. This amounted to about 8 quads (quadrillion
BTU's)
> > out of a total of 100 quads total energy consumption. So we have about
8%
> > of our total energy coming from nukes in 2000. If we accept the notion
> > that nuclear is the answer to our future energy needs since it hasn't
the
> > problems associated with fossil fuels, CO2 and diminishing resources and
> if
> > we assume (very conservatively I might add) that US energy consumption
> > remains flat, we require a sixteenfold increase in nuclear generating
> > capacity.
>
> 16 times 8 is 128, not 100. I think you meant, "... we require a twelve
and
> a half fold increase in nuclear generating capacity."
>
> >

Damn it! Karl you're right again. This is embarassing. Haste makes waste.
I'm out of pratice but that's no excuse for egregious errors such as this.
I'll never make it through GC's post if I keep going at this rate.

            King Tut reigned some 3300 years ago. Let's assume this was
> > the beginning of the nuclear age.
> > We have generated enough waste in a half century to fill Yucca mountain.
>
> Fill? The amount of spent nuclear fuel to be stored at Yucca was set to a
> specific amount for political reasons.

       People disagree. Politics is a mechanism by which we attempt to make
good decisions. There are disagreements on this topic and of course the
results of this decision will be so far reaching it is important to get it
right.It's also important to note that all those who opposes Yucca or
nuclear expansion aren't the sort to mistake an eight for a sixth. There
are good minds on both sides of this issue.
        Deciding to build nukes in the first place was also a political
decision. When the first bomb was tested there were still lingering doubts
as to whether the test would set off a much larger reaction chain that would
comsume the planet. They had done the math but humans sometimes err eh?
We can argue about whether it was justified or not but that's history. We
are at a place in history where we need to consider very carefully the steps
we take or we may be writing the final chapter or leaving a plume that mom
won't be able to clean up fast enough to save our sorry asses.

>Doubling it would be easy.

Politics politics.......

Using
> above ground storage for 50 years, to allow more of the fission products &
> Transuranics to decay, and adding solid state thermal conductors, could
> probably

Leaving aside the security risks, we are already dipping into the realm of
"probably".....

allow you to multiply the amount stored there by a factor of one
> hundred or more. But lets assume only twice as much, to be conservative.
>

> The US's spent nuclear fuel hasn't hurt anyone sitting on the surface in
> pools of water (even as some of it is fresh out of the reactor).

Some misguided people may have plans to change that.

 I don't
> know why all the hubbub about having 10 year old or older spent fuel in
> multilayered containers, surrounded by bentonite clay, in solid rock
> (especially as there's no hubbub about 'renewable' geothermal energy
plants
> in California emitting up to 5 trillion picocuries of radiation (along
with
> a host of chemical toxins) into the environment every day).

I wasn't aware of a threat from geothermal plants. I think you are trolling
with less than live bait here.

 But to comment
> on some of your numbers...
>
> >So
> > 33 centuries will have required 66 x 16 = 1056 Yucca Mountains.
Assuming
> > (again very conservatively I believe) that decomissioning of these
storage
> > facilities can take place after 10k years we will have over three
thousand
> > of these to maintain and guard by time we are ready to close the first
one
> > down.
>
> (Some rounding used in the following estimates.)
>
> So, assuming 3 times the 33.3 odd centuries, the number adds to around
> 3,168.
>
> -If we correct the 16 to 12.5, then it would be 12.5 x 66 x 3 = 2,475 (see
> how many we've saved already?)
>
> -If we assume only twice as much fuel stored per Yucca, we're down to
1,238.

I feel so much better.

>
> -Average fuel burn-up for US reactors is going up. It used to be around 25
> MegaWatt Days per Kilogram of fuel. Now it's averaging around twice that,
> which cuts the spent fuel volume per MegaWatt Day in half. Now we're down
to
> 619 Yuccas. Fuel burn-ups of 60MWD / Kg are common in some reactors now
> (which brings us to around 516 Yuccas).

"All of the country's nuclear power plants together produce about 2,000
metric tons of used fuel annually."
http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=2&catid=62

Are you seriously suggesting the real number is now only half that?

<snip more pie in the sky projections>
>
> *The more people protest Yucca mountain, the more likely it is that the
> existing spent fuel will be reprocessed.
>
> The UN estimates that 'renewable' biomass energy emissions are killing
> around 2.5 million people, every year (that's somewhere around 42.5
million
> since Chernobyl). Even some of the inflated death toll estimates for
> Chernobyl (the worst nuclear accident & likely the worst possible), are
less
> than renewable energy's daily death toll.

That's terrible Karl. Perhaps we need to ban the burning of firewood.

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